Use the worksheet below as an exercise to help you:
Articulate your topic.
Break down the topic into its main concepts.
Turn those concepts into search terms.
Come up with related terms (synonyms, broader and narrower terms).
Manipulate your search terms with boolean operatos (AND, OR, NOT), truncation, and wildcard characters.
Get optimal results!
This process gives you strategic options to use when formulating a search or when your search results are not satisfactory, whether you are searching for books in a library catalog, articles in a specialized database, or websites using Google or any general Internet search tool.
When you find a really good article or book for your topic (whether or not you have immediate access to the complete item):
If there is a detailed citation or reference to the item (aside from the brief citation or the full text of the item), look at it carefully. Usually there are assigned subject terms (aka descriptors, subject headings, index terms, controlled terms). Using these terms can improve the quaity of your search results, making the search both more targeted and more comprehensive. General keyword searching is not as thorough as using subject terms.
Look at the items referenced by the author in the bibliography, footnotes, or list of references. You may want to track down some of these items ('follow the bibliography').
Try searching for other items written by the same author.
If the article comes from a journal that is closely related to your topic, try browsing the tables of contents of other issues of the same journal (e.g., Technology and Culture).
Don't give up on finding the complete item if there is no link to it online. Save the citation and we will help you locate it. Contact a reference librarian!
Searches scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, and technical reports. Includes some full text links.
To enable the display of links to full text articles available from e-journals at Cooper: Go to Settings -- Library Links. Then search for Cooper Union and Save it.
Select Metrics to see lists of the top publications in various subject areas, such as Engineering & Computer Science, or a subcategory such as Civil Engineering.
Use the Cited By feature to follow an article forward in time - that is, to find other articles published after an that cite the older article.
- To set up links to full text articles available from Cooper, log in to your Google account. Then, go to [Menu]--Settings--Library Links, search for Cooper Union and Save.
- Select Metrics to see lists of the top publications in various subject areas.
- Use the Cited By feature to follow an article forward in time - that is, to find other articles published after it that cite the older article.
In November 2013, Judge Denny Chin dismissed the Authors Guild lawsuit, deeming Google's project as 'transformative,' and therefore within fair use guidelines. The Author's Guild has appealed, however, so the eight-year battle is not yet over. Google presented their response to the appeal in July 2014. A similar lawsuit involving photographers was settled in September 2014. If you're interested in reading more, see "Google Settles with Photographers over Google Books." and "Google Responds to The Authors Guild in Google Books Appeal."
Google has scanned over 20 million library books and created a searchable index of the complete texts. Search results can can be viewed as snippets, or small portions, of the book images.